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A Los Angeles grand jury has indicted five suspects accused of burgling the homes of celebrities including Orlando Bloom, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.
The suspects allegedly made off with millions of dollars' worth of art, cash, clothes and jewellery, according to local media reports.
They face several counts of conspiracy to commit burglary and receiving stolen property in connection with the break-ins in the Hollywood Hills area.
All five have pleaded not guilty.
The suspects were originally charged with felony burglary in October 2009, but prosecutors chose to present the case to a grand jury, which allowed the case to go directly to trial and avoid a preliminary hearing.
Celebrity websites
Los Angeles police allege the group got away with more than 3m-worth (1.8m) of stolen goods in a series of burglaries between October 2008 and August 2009.
The suspects allegedly used websites like Twitter, TMZ.com and celebrityaddresssaerial.com, to find details of the stars' homes, travel schedules and public appearances that they used to plan the burglaries, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Other alleged burglary victims include Megan Fox, Rachel Bilson, Brian Austin Green, Audrina Patridge and Ashley Tisdale.
The suspects were taken into custody after two members of the group were captured on surveillance footage breaking into the homes of Ms Lohan and Ms Patridge.

Source:BBC

The UN is to set up a single agency dedicated to promote the rights of women and girls around the world.
The UN General Assembly voted in favour of the body after four years of negotiations.
The new UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women will be referred to as UN Women, officials said.
It will start work at the beginning of next year and unify four existing UN divisions dealing with women's issues.
“UN Women will significantly boost UN efforts to promote gender equality, expand opportunity and tackle discrimination around the globe,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.
Deputy Secretary General Asha-Rose Migiro called the vote “historic”.
The new body would for the first time give the UN a “single recognised driver” for the empowerment of women, Ms Migiro said.
A new post of under-secretary general will be created to head the new body.
UN diplomats said negotiations over the establishment of UN Women took four years because of disagreements between Western countries and some developing countries.

Source:BBC

Former Argentine military ruler Jorge Videla, 84, has gone on trial for the murder of more than 30 political prisoners in 1976.
It is the first in a series of new cases against him since the supreme court overturned a presidential pardon he was given in 1990.
More than 20 other figures in the military government are also on trial.
Up to 30,000 people were tortured and murdered in Argentina during military rule from 1976-1983.
As the head of the military junta until 1981, Gen Videla is considered to have been the main architect of what became known as the “Dirty War”.
The case now being heard relates to the killing of a group of left-wing activists who were taken from their jail cells in the central city of Cordoba and shot dead shortly after the military took power.
The army said at the time that they were killed while trying to escape.
The families of the victims are being represented by Miguel Ceballos, a lawyer whose father was among those killed.
“When they came looking for my father at the prison, he knew he would be killed. He said goodbye to his friends and left a photo of his family so they could tell us what happened.”
Gen Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1985, then pardoned by President Carlos Menem in 1990.
He was arrested again in 1998 over abuses not covered by an amnesty, including the theft of babies from people killed by the military.
In 2006 the supreme court ruled that his pardon had been unconstitutional, and in 2008 he was moved from house arrest to a prison cell.
Gen Videla also faces charges in Italy, Spain France and Germany for the murder of some of their citizens in Argentina.

Source:BBC

Detailed simulations of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak show that crude is likely to start spreading into the Atlantic Ocean soon.
Once oil becomes caught in the Gulf of Mexico's fast moving Loop Current, it could be carried thousands of miles, around Florida, up the Atlantic coast of the US, and then out into the open ocean.
An animation by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) suggests that concentrations of oil in the water south of Florida will start to become detectable around 70 to 90 days after a leak starts. The Deepwater Horizon rig sank on the 22nd April.
The animation, given to the BBC World Service's programme, is based on a computer model of ocean currents and eddies, and assumes that conditions will be similar to those found in a typical year. “In the Atlantic Ocean there is a Western Boundary Current System, and the Gulf of Mexico's Loop Current is part of this system,” explains NCAR scientist Synte Peacock.
“So what happens is the current comes up through the Yucatan [Channel, the strait between Mexico and Cuba], and it does a clockwise loop within the gulf, and then shoots out and joins the Gulf Stream proper.
“So when something in the gulf gets caught up within that current, it can get out of there.”
So with that definitely happen? Dr Peacock says: “At some time in the next six months it's highly highly likely that it will escape from the Gulf.”
The Atlantic Ocean Gulf Stream carries water towards Europe, but the simulations show it is unlikely that oil will be detected that far away.
“Even a year after the spill start date, in our simulations we don't see any detectable quantities of oil hitting Europe,” says Dr Peacock.
“It's very diluted within the Atlantic Ocean.”
To create the dramatic video, the scientists modelled what would happen if they were to release a coloured tracer dye into the water at the site of the leak.
“It's like a food colouring. You inject it into the ocean and watch it disperse,” explains Dr Peacock.
The virtual dye then shows the path that the water – and therefore the oil – could take.
The researchers repeated the experiment several times, using slightly different scenarios, to arrive at a likely spread pattern for the oil.
There are still some aspects to the Gulf of Mexico leak, and the behaviour of oil released at great depth, which are not fully understood.
The scientists say that could have an influence on the accuracy of the model.
“Oil is a little bit different, for several reasons; it undergoes a number of transformations,” says Synte Peacock.
“There is a lot of evaporation in the first few hours, so it changes form.
“People are also skimming it like crazy, and trying to contain it as it comes up from the flow head. So it's not a perfect analogy by any means, but it's the closest thing we have right now.”
The model assumes an oil leak lasting just 60 days, so already the reality is worse than the model scenario.
The eventual outcome will be complicated, as the southern US heads further into hurricane season. The scientists are now trying to add simulations of storms' possible effects to the model.

Source:BBC

Gunmen have opened fire in a nightclub in Envigado, north-western Colombia, killing at least seven people.
At least nine others were wounded in the attack near Medellin, Colombia's second largest city.
Police said the attackers opened fire indiscriminately with machine-guns before escaping on motorbikes.
Officials suspect the killings were related to a dispute between rival cocaine-trafficking gangs. Police said that some of the weapons used in the attack were the same make as arms popular with drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico, indicating that they may have been imported, according to Colombia Reports newspaper.
Medellin has seen a surge in drug-related killings in recent months, making it one of the most violent cities in Colombia.
“This indicates that we must all do more, starting with the president, the ministry of defence, the armed forces, justice,” he later said in a statement.
“Drug killings are a very, very serious matter that should not be taken in vain.”
According to CIA statistics, Colombia is the world's biggest producer of cocaine, although production has consistently dropped, from 600 tonnes in 2007 to 430 tonnes in 2008 and 410 tonnes in 2009.

Source:BBC

Mexican police say they have arrested a gang leader responsible for killing three people connected to the US consulate in Ciudad Juarez in March.
Jesus Ernesto Chavez admitted targeting a US consular worker because she was thought to have given visas to a rival gang, police said.
Her husband and another man linked to the consulate were also killed.
The murders raised fears that US interests had become a target in Mexico's drugs war.
Police say the suspect leads a gang known as the Aztecs, which is linked to the Juarez cartel, one of Mexico's most powerful drug-trafficking organisations.
He is also accused of taking part in the murder of 13 teenagers at a party in Ciudad Juarez in January.
Lesley Enriquez – a US citizen working at the Juarez consulate – and her American husband Arthur Redelfs were shot dead in their car after leaving a social event in the city.
Enriquez, 35, was four months pregnant when she died. The couple's seven-month-old daughter survived the attack and was found crying in the back seat.
Jorge Alberto Salcedo – the husband of another consular worker – was killed in a near-simultaneous drive-by shooting as he drove away from the same event.
Police say he was targeted because he was driving a similar car to Enriquez, and the gunmen were not sure which one to attack.
At the time, the US state department said the killings showed the “severe and significant danger” Mexico's drugs gangs posed to Mexico and the US.
FBI agents were sent to Mexico to help with the investigation, and security at US consulates in the border region was stepped up.
Ciudad Juarez – just across the US border from El Paso in Texas – is Mexico's most violent city. More than 1,200 people have been murdered there so far this year.

Source:BBC

The Russian cargo vehicle Progress has failed to dock with the International Space Station after an apparent electronics failure.
There was a failure of “telemetry”, effectively the radio contact needed to complete the docking, Nasa said.
The spaceship was carrying food, fuel and other supplies.
Unconfirmed reports quoting a Russian cosmonaut, Alexander Skvortsov, said the cargo vehicle was spinning out of control away from the space station.
Further attempts to dock with the space station have been ruled out for today, Nasa said.
The first docking attempt had been due to happen at 1658 GMT. The telemetry failure happened 25 minutes beforehand.
After the problem arose, the Progress was forced to make a “pass” of the space station. The gap between them is currently widening, Nasa said.
It has not yet been revealed what may have caused the equipment failure.

Source:BBC

The US remains committed to positive ties with Russia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has insisted, days after the arrest of 10 alleged spies.
The suspects are said to have served Moscow while living in the US.
Amid fears the scandal could cool the warming ties between Moscow and Washington, Ms Clinton insisted the future was positive.
“We're committed to building a new and positive relation with Russia,” she said during a visit to Ukraine.
“We're looking toward the future.”
The suspects are accused of conspiracy to act as unlawful agents of a foreign government, a crime less serious than espionage but which carries up to five years in prison.

Apple says a significant fault on its new iPhone 4 is causing it to incorrectly display the phone's signal.
Users who gripped the phone on the lower left-hand side noticed the signal strength and reception fell away.
Apple says the problem relates to an error on how the signal bars are displayed, promising a patch fix “within a few weeks” and adding that users can get a full refund within 30 days of purchase if needed.
The iPhone 4 went on sale on 24 June.
In a statement, Apple said the iPhone 4 had been “the most successful product launch in Apple's history” and that all phones gripped in “certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars”.
“We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising,” the statement read.
“Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong.
“Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays two more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display four bars when we should be displaying as few as two bars.
“Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don't know it because we are erroneously displaying four or five bars.
“Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.”
Apple said it was going to adopt AT&T's formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength.
The theory now is that, once the patch update has been applied, iPhone's bars will report signal strength “far more accurately” providing users a better indication of the reception in a given area.
Apple said the new software to fix this would be released in a few weeks, claiming that as the problem also existed in the original iPhone, it would also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.
However, there have been few – if any – complaints about older iPhones losing signal strength when held in a certain way.
Apple's previous advice for iPhone 4 owners to overcome the problem of the device losing signal was to not place your hand on the lower left corner.
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said: “Just avoid holding it in that way.”
This latest approach is an unusual admission from the company, which has apologised for “any anxiety we may have caused”.
The iPhone 4 went on sale on in June, with hundreds of people queuing Apple's flagship stores across the globe.
Many new owners reported that signal strength dropped when the phone was held.
The casing of Apple's latest phone is made of stainless steel, and also serves as its antenna.
The problem is thought to be particularly acute for left-handed owners who naturally touch the phone in the sensitive area.
Apple sells a rubber “bumper” that shields the sensitive area, as do many other firms.
When Mr Jobs introduced the iPhone 4 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, he described the integrated antenna as “really cool engineering”.

Source:BBC

The use of a new vessel to capture oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill site has been delayed by tropical storm Alex.
The Helix producer ship was expected to be taking oil from the well by the end of June, but it will now not be working until the middle of next week.
Once the vessel is working it has been predicted BP will be capturing 53,000 barrels of oil a day.
There are also plans to use a giant tanker, refitted to scoop up oil, at the spill site.
The ship known as “A Whale” is waiting for approval to join the clean-up.
Alex, briefly classified as a hurricane before being downgraded to a tropical storm, has stopped clean-up efforts in much of the Gulf.
Small skimmer boats, in particular, have been unable to operate in choppy seas and have had to return to shore.
At the spill site the two current capture vessels have continued to work, despite the bad weather.
But the plans to connect the vessel Helix to the “kill” valve on the blowout preventer device on the top of the well have been delayed.
“We will need about three days after the weather calms… for that vessel to be able to hook up to the flexible coupling that it would be required to do,” incident commander Thad Allen said.

Source:BBC

The arrest of 10 alleged spies in the United States has thrust the ancient practice of steganography into the limelight.
Several of the suspects are accused of using the method to conceal data being transmitted from the US to Russia.
As you might expect for a technique that involves hiding information, steganography has always had a shady reputation.
That question mark over it dates from the text in which the word was coined, Steganographia, which was written in 1499 by Johannes Trithemius but not published until 1606.
The name of the book derives from the Greek for concealed writing and steganographic techniques involve hiding messages in otherwise innocent-looking media – be that text, images or video.
Trithemius' text details a series of magical techniques that would enable anyone who could follow the maths to communicate over long distances by bending planetary spirits to their will.
Writing a spell book was decidedly dangerous during those God and Church fearing times; that Trithemius was the Abbot of Sponheim when he wrote the text was no defence.
The Catholic Church considered the three volumes of Steganographia to be so dangerous that it put them on its list of prohibited works. They stayed banned for almost 300 years.
Despite the prohibition, the texts were sought out by the growing number of Renaissance scholars who were part-scientist, part-theologian and wholly curious about the way the Universe worked.
One of the most famous of those men was the brilliant Englishman John Dee, Queen Elizabeth's astrologer and a man named as an “ornament of the age” by one of his biographers.
The text was particularly interesting for Dee because he was actively engaged in spirit magic and was an evangelist for the fledgling science of mathematics.
Dee was instrumental in having many of the foundational texts of mathematics, such as Euclid's Elements of Geometry, translated and distributed in Britain for the first time.
Modern-day analysis of the Steganographia shows that the tricky mathematics and magic were a ruse to keep this useful technique out of the hands of those that would abuse it.
The supposed magical rituals and communications with demons detailed in the third volume were actually ciphers, methods for turning text you want to hide into something less obvious.
That it took hundreds of years for this to be realised is perhaps a testament to how good steganography can be at concealing information.
This also reveals the key to understanding it. While scrambled, encrypted text is easy to spot and hard to make plain, by contrast text hidden by steganography is hard to spot but relatively easy to make plain once you know it is there.
It is fair to say that those who are in the trade of hiding information have preferred to encrypt it rather than hide it with steganography. There are examples of it being used during World War II but encryption was far more popular.
The modern day and the rise of computers has re-ignited interest in it particularly as a way to hide text in all kinds of places such as images.
This technique involves making tiny changes to the values used to define the colour of a pixel. In a 24-bit image each pixel has its colour defined by three numbers – one for each channel – red, green and blue.
A tiny change to each pixel will alter its colour but not so much that humans could spot it. However with the right software, or a reference image, the changes would stand out.
The changes can be built up to number Ascii codes that define letters, and slowly build up a message.
Many claims have been made for different groups using this technique, called Least Significant Bit insertion, to pass secret messages back and forth. In 2001 there were claims that Al Qaeda was hiding messages in pornographic images.
However, searches of millions of images from all over the web have failed to turn up any evidence of hidden messages to Al Qaeda operatives working under deep cover in the West.

Source:BBC

There were about 125,000 US jobs lost in June, the Labor Department has said, the first time jobs were lost on a month-on-month basis since October.
The overall decline was driven by the departure of 225,000 temporary employees who had been working on the US census in May.
But the US unemployment rate fell to 9.5% in June from 9.7% in May.
The private sector created 83,000 jobs, data which investors will look to for signs of recovery.
That was an improvement on May but below March and April's totals.
The unemployment rate fell as 652,000 people gave up on their job searches. People no longer looking for work do not count in the unemployment data.
The monthly jobs report is one of the most closely watched economic indicators in the US.
High unemployment remains one of the biggest obstacles to strong, sustained growth.
Analysts say that high unemployment has kept consumer confidence low, preventing retail sales from growing rapidly.
Given that consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of the US economy, there are concerns that until more people are in work, the economy will grow only modestly.

Source:BBC

A British man who claims he was married to alleged Russian spy Anna Chapman has been speaking about their relationship.
Alex Chapman told the Daily Telegraph he met Ms Chapman at a London party and married her five months later in 2002.
He said he was “not surprised” by the arrest; his former wife said her father had once been high up in the KGB.
Ten alleged members of a Russian spy ring were arrested in the US and one in Cyprus after an FBI inquiry. Bail hearings are currently taking place.
They were charged with conspiracy to act as unlawful agents of a foreign government, a crime which carries up to five years in prison.
Publicist Max Clifford said Mr Chapman, who was married to Ms Chapman for four years, said his former wife had become “increasingly distant” and “increasingly secretive” as their marriage progressed.
Film premieres
“The relationship changed and she became more and more distant, and spent more of her time mixing with the very rich and powerful people, going to film premieres,” Mr Clifford told the BBC.
He said Mr Chapman had told him his former wife's father, Russian diplomat Vasily Kushchenko, had had a “huge influence” on her.
“The inference is her father was at the heart of everything that she did, so therefore the person that, if you like, was arranging the invitations, was making the contacts, would have been directly or indirectly through her father,” Mr Clifford said.
, Mr Chapman, 30, from Bournemouth, Dorset, said he had first met her father on the couple's honeymoon in Zimbabwe in 2002, where Mr Kushchenko was serving as a diplomat.
“I asked her what her father's job was and Anna just said he was there to represent the Russian government in certain areas of government.
“He didn't trust anyone. He asked me why I had chosen a Russian bride and asked what business I had in Russia, and I said none.
“He was scary. He would never introduce me to other Russian people who came to the house and he always seemed to have a lot more security than the other diplomats,” he said.
He also told the paper: “Anna told me her father had been high up in the ranks of the KGB. She said he had been an agent in 'old Russia'.
“When I saw that she had been arrested on suspicion of spying it didn't come as much of a surprise to be honest.”
Mr Chapman, who has remained friends with his former wife, was questioned by MI5 on Wednesday about his relationship with her.
The BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera said MI5 and the FBI were in talks and the “key question” was whether Anna Chapman had been active as an undercover Russian agent in the UK.
“It sounds as if after becoming married she then began to change and began to take on a secret life.
“Which does suggest she may have been active in some way or at least preparing to become active while she was in Britain.
“If she was spying here, they might be able to find out who she was working with, what secrets she might have got,” he said.
Ms Chapman, 28, worked in the financial sector for a few years after moving to London in 2002.
According to the Telegraph, she moved back to Russia when her marriage ended in 2006, before moving to the US where she established an online property venture.
Ms Chapman had her bail request denied by a US court on Monday.
Prosecutors say one of her co-accused has confessed to being an agent for the Kremlin. The suspect, who called himself Juan Lazaro, has admitted that was not his real name.
The Foreign Office said it was looking into Anna Chapman's links to Britain.

Source:BBC

Sunday is election day in more than a dozen Mexican states, with voters set to choose governors, state deputies and mayors.
Attention will not just be on the results but on how polling day unfolds given the wave of violence that has marred campaigning in some areas.
Mexico's powerful drug gangs have been blamed for much of the violence, a sign, according to some, of the growing influence of organised crime in the country.
For months, candidates in many of the 14 states holding elections have complained of intimidation by alleged criminal gangs that has forced them to adopt special security measures and limit their campaigning in high-risk areas.

At least 21 people have been killed in a gunfight between two of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels near the border with the US, officials have said.
The incident occurred off a remote dirt track near the city of Nogales, in the northern state of Sonora, they said.
Nine people have been arrested, six of whom were wounded in the confrontation.
Correspondents say gangs are involved in smuggling drugs and people to the US, and have been battling for control of the area – a key trafficking route.
However, they rarely stage such large-scale shootouts, they add.
There was no indication about what specifically triggered Thursday's gunfight between the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, and an offshoot, the Beltran Leyva cartel.
All of the victims were believed to be members of the gangs.

The state of California will pay 20m (13m) to Jaycee Dugard for claims parole officers failed to do their jobs while monitoring the sexual offender who was allegedly holding her prisoner.
The lawmakers approved the settlement for Ms Dugard, who was imprisoned for nearly two decades in the backyard of suspect Phillip Garrido's home.
She bore two daughters while imprisoned before being discovered last August.
The family claimed psychological, physical and emotional damages.
The 30-year-old mother and her daughters, who were allegedly fathered by the suspected kidnapper, filed claims in February saying the three victims had remained undiscovered even though parole agents for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation began supervising Mr Garrido in 1999.
He was being monitored following a previous conviction for rape and kidnap in Nevada.
Mr Garrido and his wife Nancy have pleaded not guilty to charges that they kidnapped and raped Ms Dugard.
“It is compensation for three people for the rest of their lives who have been horribly damaged over a period of 17 or 18 years,” mediator Daniel Weinstein told the Associated Press news agency.
Mr Weinstein said the money would be used to pay for therapy, ensure privacy, buy the family a home, pay for education and replace lost income.
“I can't emphasize enough that we've got to be much more prudent in terms of how we provide oversight for released prisoners in the state of California,” said California State Assemblyman Ted Gaines.
Mr Weinstein said Ms Dugard's mother had also filed a claim in February with the state of California, but it had not been included in the settlement.
A bill detailing the compensation package for Ms Dugard now awaits approval from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Ms Dugard was discovered in the suspect's backyard in August 2009, after Mr Garrido was ordered to a parole meeting by police officers whose suspicions were aroused by the behaviour of Ms Dugard's daughters, who were with him.

Source:BBC

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered some 200,000 state workers to be paid the minimum wage because no budget has been passed.
The order means most state employees will receive the federal minimum wage of 7.25 (4.82) per hour as of 1 July.
California faces a 19bn deficit as the new fiscal year begins and the state legislature has yet to agree a budget.
A similar wage order was made two years ago but was not obeyed. Once a budget is signed, workers will get back pay.
More than 30,000 state workers whose unions have recently agreed new pay and pensions deals with the state administration have been exempted from the wage cut.
They include California Highway Patrol officers.
State controller John Chiang, who issues the paychecks to state employees, has said he will not follow the order, the Los Angeles Times reports.
He also refused in 2008, when Mr Schwarzenegger last ordered him to cut state employees' wages. The matter is still before the courts.
A spokesman for Mr Schwarzenegger, Aaron McLear, said the Republican governor was sending a message to the controller “to follow the law”.
Mr Schwarzenegger has said that California, which has been badly affected by the global economic downturn, has no choice but to face spending cuts.
The Republicans argue that raising taxes would stifle private sector job creation and slow any economic recovery.
California's constitution requires its budget to be approved by a two-thirds majority of lawmakers.
They are often gridlocked and the state's budget problems mount up.

Source:BBC

Toyota has announced it will recall 270,000 cars worldwide because of an engine fault.
A Toyota spokesman said the recall included seven luxury Lexus models and the popular Toyota Crown.
The latest quality problem follows the recall of more than 8m vehicles which had problems with sticking accelerator pedals earlier this year.
The company was fined 16m (10.6m) in the United States for its slow response to the accelerator fault.
The company is still facing more than 200 lawsuits tied to accelerator accidents.
A spokeswoman for the firm said some vehicles might have a problem with the valve spring in their engines, which could cause the car to stall while being driven.
The defective 4.6-litre V8 and 3.5-litre V6 engines had been installed in eight top-line models including some hybrids – the Lexus GS350, GS450h, GS460, IS350, LS460, LS600h and LS600hL as well as the Crown sedan.
No accidents had been reported, the spokeswoman said.
Some 3,200 Lexus vehicles in the UK were involved, a spokesperson said, but no Toyotas.
“Lexus will do whatever it can to ensure that our customers' inconvenience is minimised as much as possible, decide on the details of any action, and inform our customers promptly,” a company statement said.
Owners with concerns should contact their local dealer.

Source:BBC

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is due in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, at the start of a five-nation tour of former Communist states.
The trip, announced over a month ago, was intended to reaffirm relations with ex-Soviet states as part of a renewal of ties between Washington and Moscow.
But the trip is now overshadowed by the arrest of 10 people in the US accused of being Russian spies.
Mrs Clinton will also visit Poland, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.
Washington is still readjusting to the election of the new president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovytch, seen as being much more pro-Russian than his predecessor, the BBC's David Stern reports from Kiev.
Mrs Clinton is expected to raise the issue of the deterioration of press freedoms in the country.
In Azerbaijan and Armenia she will push for a resolution for the region's conflicts, and bolster US access to an overland route used for supplying troops to Afghanistan, our correspondent says.
In Georgia Mrs Clinton will have to reassure officials that the government of embattled President Mikheil Saakashvili still has their support despite their attempt to improve relations with the Kremlin.
The 10 people arrested in the US have been accused of posing as ordinary residents to collect information for Russian intelligence.

Source:BBC

Hurricane Alex has brought torrential rain as it weakened to a tropical storm over northeastern Mexico, flooding the city of Monterrey.
At least two people were killed when a river burst its banks, inundating roads and washing away cars.
Alex was a category two hurricane when it hit the Gulf coast on Wednesday night, but lost force as it moved inland.
It was expected to dissipate over the Mexican highlands on Friday.
The usually dry Santa Catalina river that runs through the centre of Monterrey turned into a raging torrent, flooding major highways and paralysing Mexico's third-biggest city.
One man died after he was swept nearly 500 metres by the waters and trapped against a fence. The body of another drowned man was found in a creek.
A 12-tonne statue of the revered Virgin of Guadalupe was knocked off its plinth on the river bank.
Flood waters also hit the city zoo, sweeping animals including buffalo from their pens, the Reuters news agency reported.
Alex was the first hurricane of the 2010 Atlantic season, and the first to appear in June since 1995.
It caused severe flooding along Mexico's Gulf coast when it made landfall on Wednesday night.
Emergency workers in the port city of Matamoros have been using boats to assess the damage in some neighbourhoods.
“The city is practically under water” the director of civil defence, Saul Hernandez, told the AP news agency.
“But the most important thing is there was no loss of life. We took opportune measures to evacuate people”
Thousands of people in coastal villages were moved to higher ground before the storm hit.
Many towns were left without electricity, and phone lines were also down.
Heavy seas caused by the storm also disrupted BP's oil spill clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico.
Alex largely spared the US state of Texas, which had prepared for a possible direct hit.
It brought heavy rain and caused at least two tornadoes, but there were no reports of injuries or major damage.
However, there are still warnings of possible flash-flooding in some areas of the state.

Source:BBC